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The aim of my dissertation is to examine the Harassment and Violence (HV) that Latinas face while working in the Ontario Construction Industry (OCI). I was specifically interested in the toxic impact HV has on Latina worker’s professional careers, as well as their personal lives. My qualitative research interviews (pláticas) with fourteen Latina construction workers, provided me with the capacity to explain how the labour they perform, and the legal invisibility by which they are defined, systematically combine to disenfranchise Latinas. I explain how the hyper-visible identity of Latinas on job sites, compounds the invisibility of their labour, even as language barriers significantly diminish their individual capacity to report and combat HV effectively. This dissertation also illuminates the persistent state of vulnerability (harassment, wage theft, and/or working in dangerous conditions) experienced by Latinas working without status in the OCI. I open with a literature review illuminating my uniquely intersectional, methodological position as a Canadian-born, Spanish-speaking academic researcher with more than two decades of experience working as a safety inspector in the OCI. My pláticas with fourteen Latinas working in the OCI reveal how workplace dynamics and regulatory inconsistencies contribute to their vulnerability to supervisory exploitation and discrimination from co-workers. The concepts of tokenism, intersectionality, and the conditionality of precarious status help explain how systemic labour policies have placed women in positions where following workplace regulations can inadvertently reinforce their collective marginalization. I found that the toxic, racialized, gendered culture of the OCI is reproduced even when women receive status, such as in the case of supervisors. I recommend a systemic shift in the culture of the OCI which keeps HV underground and normalizes the approach to Latina women in the industry. My dissertation concludes by recommending that support groups, operating outside of state structures, should be funded to serve as the frontline of protection.

This dissertation explores the intersections of music curriculum, identity, and career components to provide a deeper understanding of musicians’ livelihoods in Canada. To assess the alignment of post-secondary training with the practices of professional musicians today, the author studies undergraduate music performance curricula and nontraditional performance work, examines rhetoric surrounding musicians’ identities, and delineates portfolio careers. Drawing on first-hand Canadian data through a national survey and interviews with graduates of post-secondary music performance programs, a survey of adaptive concert performers, and a curriculum analysis based on web-scraped data from five prominent institutions, the dissertation applies social constructionist theory and the transformative lens to emphasize musicians’ perspectives in a practical dissemination of findings. Three core articles address three critical aspects of musicians’ careers: (1) Canadian undergraduate music performance curricula, focusing on coursework beyond core musicianship; (2) the portfolio careers of Canadian-trained classical musicians, assessing employment patterns, career sustainability, training relevancy, and identity formation; and (3) nontraditional performance work, with specific focus on adaptive concerts as an emerging performance avenue. The synthesis and conclusion distill key takeaways and present actionable recommendations for curriculum reform, identity affirmation, and professional preparation. The careers of classical musicians are increasingly precarious and multifaceted, challenging the legitimacy of traditional conservatory models that frame success primarily in terms of full-time performance careers. This research contributes to discourse on music careers by identifying gaps in institutional training and exposing the realities of professional life for performance graduates. By integrating concepts from the performing arts, curriculum, and entrepreneurship, this dissertation offers interdisciplinary insights into how institutions and society might better support musicians in building sustainable careers.

In Canada, social assistance programs act as a ‘safety net’ to prevent those living in poverty from reaching destitution. However, this safety net comes with expectations – in the form of welfare-to-work programs that mandate beneficiaries’ participation in work-related activities. Underlying these welfare-to-work programs are ideas surrounding citizenship, activation, dependency, and the role of the state in supporting the welfare of its citizens. Embedded in these programs are the ideas of market citizenship and activation, two ideas that tell the story of the ideal citizen in Canada: a self-sufficient and appropriately activated market citizen, who fulfils their obligation of supporting themselves through participation in paid employment. Subsequently, through the ideas of market citizenship and activation, social assistance beneficiaries represent the antagonist to the ideal citizen: an unmotivated, dependent, support-needing citizen. Although scholars often situate the emergence of the ideas of market citizenship and activation during the late 20th century period of welfare reform in Canada, this perspective negates the history of these ideas in social assistance policies. Informed by the theory of Critical Human Ecology and the methodology of Ideational Analysis, this thesis explores the development of the ideas of market citizenship and activation across institutional approaches to poor relief in Canada. By taking a long-term historical perspective, this thesis finds evidence of the ideas of market citizenship and activation as early as the 17th century in Canadian institutional approaches to poor relief, and counters the prevailing perspective that market citizenship and activation emerged in the late 20th century in Canadian institutional approaches to poor relief.

The following thesis paper examines the continued presence of antisemitism in the ruling Alberta Social Credit Party (SCP) between 1943 and 1968, and Canadian Jewish organizational efforts to obtain anti-discrimination legislation. The Alberta Social Credit grassroots movement involved radical monetary policies, religious fundamentalism, conspiracy theories and antisemitic rhetoric. How did such an unorthodox party retain provincial control for thirty-six years despite the organization's persistent antisemitism? The question is significant to the ongoing narrative of Alberta politics amid a sharp rise in antisemitism within Canada today. The principal methodology includes qualitative research of primary sources from the SCP and Canadian Jewish archives and academic literature. Within this study period, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) transitioned from an organization with little infrastructure to a leading institution with strong ties to other Canadian Jewish bodies, and labour and civil groups, struggling to enshrine protections for Canadian Jews. The results demonstrate that in the 1950s and early 1960s, as many Canadian provincial governments enacted equal rights legislation, Premier Ernest Manning's Social Credit government resisted such laws in Alberta. As a result, Jewish leaders escalated initiatives in Alberta. Throughout his leadership, Manning routinely denied accusations of antisemitism leveled against his party. Eventually, Manning and the Alberta SCP government were forced to establish human rights legislation in 1966, although the provisions were limited in scope. Manning curtailed Social Credit antisemitism when it became a political liability, but he did not comprehensively eliminate it. Through collaborative efforts, the CJC and other Canadian Jewish groups finally achieved legalized protections for the Jewish community in Alberta.

Food insecurity remains a challenge even in high-income countries. This study has two main goals: (i) to explore the factors driving differences in household food security between urban and rural areas; and (ii) to examine public perceptions regarding the existence, causes, and solutions to food insecurity. The first objective is addressed through a multinomial logit analysis of data from the CIS 2021. The second builds on Attribution Theory and involves a survey conducted with a representative Canadian sample, analyzed using factor analysis. Findings show that rural households would be 1.4% more likely to experience food insecurity than urban ones. The identified public antecedents include economic conditions, the food system and government, social support, and individual factors. The government is seen as primarily responsible for addressing the issue. Recommended policy measures include reducing food prices for low-income populations, improving access to affordable food shops, and supporting increased local food production.

Le contexte de pénurie de main-d'œuvre au Québec lors des dernières années a entraîné une augmentation du recrutement de travailleurs migrants temporaires dans différents secteurs d'emploi. Ces travailleurs sont souvent engagés par des agences de recrutement à l'international ou des agences de placement, particulièrement dans des secteurs considérés précaires et « essentiels ». Hors du secteur de l'entretien ménager, la littérature a montré que les agences façonnent le lien d'emploi des travailleurs avec leur employeur, créant ainsi une main-d'œuvre « flexible », conçue pour répondre aux besoins ponctuels et temporaires des entreprises (Belzile, 2018; Mercure, 2014). Ce mémoire s'intéresse aux travailleurs migrants temporaires du secteur de l'entretien ménager, recrutés par une agence de recrutement à l'international, principalement en hôtellerie, dans la région de Québec. Ce secteur présente une forte variabilité saisonnière des conditions de travail et, par le fait même, est fortement touché par la pénurie de main-d'œuvre puisque de nombreux employés revendiquent précisément cela; de meilleures conditions de travail (Guilbault, 2024). Cette dynamique est particulièrement marquée dans la région de Québec où la nécessité d'embaucher de la main-d'œuvre à l'international est devenue de plus en plus cruciale pour le secteur de l'entretien ménager. Cette étude s'inscrit dans un projet plus large financé par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines (CRSH); le projet PARtenariat sur les migrants Temporaires en EMPloi (PARTEMP), qui vise à produire des connaissances sur les travailleurs migrants temporaires dans la région de Québec (Chaire de recherche du Canada sur les dynamiques migratoires mondiales, 2021). L'objectif principal de ce mémoire est de comprendre les expériences et les conditions de travail de ces travailleurs au sein d'un secteur peu exploré dans la littérature en contexte québécois. Les concepts de précarité, de mobilité et d'agentivité sont mobilisés pour appréhender l'expérience des travailleurs migrants temporaires. 14 entretiens semi-dirigés avec des travailleurs de nationalités différentes, majoritairement des latinoaméricains et des femmes, ont été réalisés entre mai et août 2023. L'analyse révèle plusieurs formes de précarité par le croisement de la relation d'emploi, le statut migratoire, le manque d'accès à l'information et la barrière de la langue. La flexibilité, une exigence structurelle du secteur d'emploi, et la mobilité sont des facteurs de précarisation. Le secteur exige des déplacements fréquents verticaux sur le lieu de travail, d'un étage à l'autre, et horizontaux sur le territoire. Cependant, ces travailleurs se montrent créatifs et « résilients », faisant preuve d'agentivité individuelle et collective dans le but d'améliorer leurs conditions de travail et de vie dans la région de Québec.

This study critically examines the limitations and inadequacies of Human Capital Theory (HCT) in addressing the employment realities of immigrant women of colour in Canada. Rooted in neoliberal ideology and neoclassical economics, HCT assumes that individual investments in education and skills directly lead to economic success. However, this framework fails to account for systemic barriers, structural racism, and gendered discrimination that disproportionately disadvantage equity-deserving communities. Applying Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of social capital and habitus alongside critical race theory (CRT), this research interrogates HCT to examine how race- and gender-based exclusions, social networks, cultural norms, and institutionalized biases shape career trajectories. While intersectionality is not the central focus, the study integrates an intersectional analysis to highlight the compounded disadvantages faced by immigrant women of colour in the labour market. Employing Indigenous storytelling methodologies and narrative inquiry, this research foregrounds the lived experiences of immigrant women of colour to challenge the assumptions of HCT. By conducting a comprehensive literature review and examining CRT, the study further interrogates how race, power, and systemic exclusion intersect with economic mobility. Despite its widespread acceptance, HCT remains insufficient in explaining the persistent employment gaps and labour market marginalization of immigrant women of colour. This study argues that access to social capital is a critical determinant of career success, often privileging dominant groups while excluding racialized immigrants. The interplay between HCT and social capital theory creates compounded barriers, reinforcing systemic inequalities and limiting career advancement for marginalized populations. As Bourdieu’s work does not explicitly address racial disparities, this study integrates CRT to demonstrate how race fundamentally influences labour market outcomes. By bridging these theoretical perspectives, the research challenges dominant economic narratives and calls for policy reforms that recognize and dismantle structural barriers to economic equity for immigrant women of colour.

In this dissertation, I propose the term resource rhetoric to describe the cultural logic that renders extractivism an interminable part of Canadian identity. As Canada solidified its settler-colonial expansion in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, there was an attendant formalization of infrastructures promoting the extractivist ambitions of the state. Within those infrastructures a resource discourse—of natural resources and human resource management—was born. In Resource Rhetoric in Three Canadian Novels, 1919-1945, I examine three novels that articulate a cultural dimension to Canada’s broad attempt to adapt workers to a confluence of precarious working conditions in the first half of the twentieth century. I analyze the downplaying of class formation in these novels and link it to their use of resource rhetoric—tropes and figures that assert the primacy of the extractivist state over and against the primacy of the working-class collective. My thesis develops by first establishing the 1919-1945 period as one marked by an unease about whether workers could truly become the “human resources” Canada’s extractivist economy needed. I explore how this uncertainty is manifested in Douglas Durkin’s 1923 novel The Magpie, an economic novel set during the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. I then demonstrate that during the interwar period, a worker’s success in embodying the ideal Canadian “human resource” identity was measured against a racial hierarchy emerging from eugenic ideology. In my analysis of Irene Baird’s 1938 novel Waste Heritage, I consider how the “rank and sort” logic of eugenics is used to calibrate moral rectitude in the novel’s portrayal of labour strife among Canada’s Depression-era unemployed. In the second part of my thesis, I consider how human resource discourse expanded to include social reproductive labour in the period just prior to the establishment of Canada’s welfare state. I argue that Gabrielle Roy’s 1945 novel The Tin Flute makes the home a terrain for potential class struggle against the exploitation of women’s work, while at the same time positioning this work as vital for the Canadian state to function. The rhetorical framing of workers in these novels consistently emphasizes their lack of agency and cooperation; foregrounds their interchangeability, and stresses workers’ inability to overcome their circumstances because of these factors. They articulate a deep-seated clash between the imperative that workers act as assets to Canada’s resource state, and the imperative that they might improve their lives through class formation and solidarity. While these novels are generally aligned with the resource discourse of the era, they demonstrate one fundamental failure of extractivist ideologies and resource logic: a person can never truly be a “dematerialized asset,” or a “universal Canadian worker subject.” My main claim in this thesis is that these novels show that to be a human resource is an unattainable goal.

This dissertation explores the evolution and politics behind the concept of the ‘dependent contractor’ in Ontario, from its earliest incarnations in the late 1970s to its current usage in the gig economy, as interpreted and applied by the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB). It examines how the Board’s interpretation and application of dependent contractor provisions has impacted workers whose employment status falls somewhere between traditional notions of independent contractor and employee, i.e. the ‘grey area’ as the Board has referred to it, over a period of changing employment relationships and of increasingly precarious work. The research tracks these changes over time, examining how previous OLRB jurisprudence on dependent contractors can be seen to impact its decisions in more contemporary contexts (e.g Foodora, 2020) and what this might tell us about the Board’s understanding of employment relations in a changing capitalist economy. The analysis seeks to place the actions of the OLRB into a broader social context to assess what factors have influenced the Board’s decisions and gauge how it understands both its potential to address employment inequities and the limits it faces in doing so within a capitalist economy. This dissertation argues that the OLRB operated with an implicit industrial pluralist understanding of labour-capital relations and made decisions informed by that approach and, in doing so, lacked an appreciation of how capitalist workplaces were changing over time in a way that evaded control via that understanding. It further argues that while bodies such as the OLRB have some autonomy from capitalists and the capitalist state, they are unable to, nor are they designed to, overcome or dramatically alter the power imbalances that exist in capitalist civil society.

This dissertation examines economic justice and employment precarity faced by educators in both K-12 and post-secondary education systems. While literature explores themes of changing demographics in union membership, collective bargaining, labor activism, and gendered and intersectional inequities in academia, and women in leadership in unions, a critical gap of disabled women’s voices and solutions to the inequities remains. This study highlights how job insecurity, unequal pay, hiring biases, limited recognition of prior learning, and inadequate institutional support exacerbates mental health challenges, professional invisibility, and economic instability. In the K-12 unionized system, systemic barriers such include disregard for substitute teaching as a viable career and challenges for experienced teachers to get hired over cheaper, inexperienced teachers. In post-secondary education, shifting immigration policies, funding cuts, and undervaluation of non-traditional scholarship deepen instability. This research advances equity-focused strategies. By integrating lived experience with structural and systemic critique, the study calls for reforms that prioritize stability, recognition, and inclusive pathways for all educators navigating precarious employment and economic justice. The study contributes to broader conversations on improving women’s engagement and addressing the inequalities inherent in current labor systems.